Getting What You Don’t Deserve

Without question the 20 innocent children and 6 adults killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut didn’t get anything close to what they deserved. Just like those killed in Aurora, Colorado, this summer, and more recently those killed in a mall in Oregon. Just like the innocent civilians around the world killed by exported American weapons like the ones used in Sandy Hook, even more lethal when fully automatic.

I’m also remembering today 20-year-old Tonette Thomas allegedly killed by former boyfriend, 29-year-old Michael Anderson who is also suspected of seriously injuring her sister and aunt in the same attack. At Tonette’s funeral, her 18-year-old friend Amy Quick, wearing a Stop the Violence button, spoke passionately saying, “We’re dying. We have to stop the violence against Albany’s teenagers,” Her words moved funeral goers to tears and a standing ovation. Clearly Tonette didn’t get what she deserved either.

With violence interruption efforts like SNUG, I we can reduce and prevent acts of violence in Albany. But that won’t stop children from getting brain cancer. That will not stop infants from being born with crippling birth defects. That won’t stop any number of accidents that wreck or take the blameless and innocent. After you throw in serious mental illness, discrimination, oppression, racism, classism, and sexism, lots and lots of people are not getting what they deserve.

So, what does it mean to get what you deserve? What do I have a right to have or possess? To what am I entitled as a result of my past actions, devotion and service?

This question gets debated every day, particularly by politicians in legislative halls. Mostly, Americans agree that what you get should be proportional to what you give. This is a natural, practically intuitive moral position in an egalitarian society like ours. We practice it every day in the marketplace exchanging our hard earned cash for food, clothing, shelter, services and entertainment. In the marketplace we are intensely concerned with getting a fair deal, or even better, one that tilts in our advantage. Few of us relishes the idea of getting less than we deserve or being ripped off.

Gift giving, however, operates on different rules.

The parable of the workers in the vineyard (Matthew 20) illustrates the difference. Jesus uses it to describe the Realm of God.

A landowner needed help working his vineyard. In the morning he hired men for one denarius and sent them out to work. In the third hour he hired some more idle workers in the marketplace and sent them out to work in the vineyard. In the sixth hour he did the same with some workers he met also in need of work, the same again in the eleventh hour. In the evening he paid them all exactly the same wage although some had worked one hour and others had worked twelve hours. (New York State law wouldn’t permit this I don’t think). As you might expect, the first hired were not happy with this outcome and complained. But the landowner answered the lead complainer:

‘Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for one denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

Generous? I wonder. If he really wanted to be generous, he’d give those first people more money too instead of offending their sense of fairness. This parable is so disturbing because it mixes two different kinds of economies, market and gift economies.

Gift economies typically predate market economies that arise with bartering between unrelated or potentially hostile groups. Social scientists believe gift economies evolved first through sharing food. Leftovers that would spoil and be wasted otherwise could be used to build community. Sharing or gift giving forms the basis for structuring the community. Many are familiar with the potlatch ceremonies among Northwestern Native American tribes. At potlatch gatherings, the clan leader hosts guests in his lodge and holds a great feast with singing and dancing. The status of the family increases based on how much he can give away, thus demonstrating his wealth and prominence. Reminds me of those Oprah Winfrey shows as she gives an enormous amount of stuff away on TV.

The spirit of generosity binds the community together. The giving and receiving forges emotional bonds of social cohesion. The true gift that strengthens these bonds comes through a spirit of gratitude. The false gift given from a sense of obligation does not strengthen those emotional bonds. Maybe our intuitive awareness of this is why we struggle so much with feeling manipulated in our gift giving this time of year.

Gift economies are not just historical cultural artifacts. The open source movement in software development is an example of a modern day gift economy. Programmers can increase their status by how much they contribute to this kind of free software development. Wikipedia, like much of the web, operates on the basis of generosity. Google’s economic model is heavily gift based too.

Open source software illustrates the tension between market and gift economies we sense emotionally. You very rarely get something for nothing. Sure, I love all the free stuff I get by using Google’s open source software, search engines and free (at least for now) storage for my files in the cloud. Yet I do inadvertently offer them valuable information about me that they collect and can resell to advertisers, perhaps even the FBI and the CIA.

While the gift received in a gift economy is indeed free. Accepting it does bind one into a social network and the expectation of future reciprocity. Not a direct exchange mind you, just an expectation of sharing when good fortune comes down my road.

Jesus conflates the market and gift economies for a purpose. He seeks metaphors that describe the Realm of God he brings to life. The Realm of God is not a market economy where only the healthy, wealthy and wise prosper and the sick, poor, and foolish suffer. In fact, just the opposite, with the mourners getting comforted and the meek inheriting the earth. The Realm of God is unlike everything that was commonplace in Biblical times and still today.

The Realm of God Jesus proclaimed continues to unfold in the world and transform it. In Christian theology, the agent of that transformation is the grace of the Holy Spirit that dwells in us and among us. Theologians differ on exactly how that grace works. What is clear, as Jesus’ parables teach, is that grace is an unearned gift. Yes, it may come to the sanctified and predestined Puritan believer. And it may also come to the drunk lying in the gutter who has squandered his life. It may come to the most vile person in prison. It may come to any one of us, no matter what we believe or don’t believe or what we have done or not done. In theory, grace can appear as a free gift without prerequisites at any time and at any age.

Our Universalist forbears understood grace as a gift freely given to ALL humanity rather than one sect or another. They interpreted the Biblical text to proclaim universal salvation. No one was excluded from Jesus’ loving embrace of humanity. Our sin is finite and God’s love is infinite. Nothing we could do, as Paul so eloquently wrote in his letters, could separate us from God’s love.

Today we proclaim this universal access to grace in the language of our first principle, “The inherent worth and dignity of every person.” Whether Christian, Jew, Universalist, Unitarian, agnostic, humanist, or atheist, all are worthy, all may be touched by grace.

But we are not puppets of grace. Few of us see grace as an irresistible force as Augustine did. We have the free will to open our hearts and give an assent to that love to which grace awakens and points us. Neither belief nor unbelief, neither good works nor selfish preoccupation, are prerequisites for receiving and responding to the experience of grace.

And gift giving can invite a grace filled moment to arise.

(spoiler alert – see story at the end of this blog before continuing)

I suspect Manuel knew all this, at least intuitively, when he gave away all those presents he unexpectedly received. He didn’t look the gift horse in the mouth. He didn’t evaluate how much he deserved those gifts. The people he knew who really could benefit far more than his family immediately came to his mind . He had enough, not a lot, but enough. They didn’t. The very poorest appreciate the value of gift economies far more than those more fortunate. If you’ve got it, you share it.

Gifts given from an inner sense of abundance and generosity are the best gifts since they don’t come with expectations or strings attached. I’m fairly confident that is the way Oprah gives on her show. The effect that kind of giving and receiving has on people can be full of grace. It can initiate an inner state that is life transforming. Getting what you don’t deserve in this way can free people from the narrow sense of being a separate, isolated self.

When we are at our best as a congregation, we create a gift economy here. Our congregation isn’t as graceful when we turn it into a place for commodity exchange or fee for service. We don’t assess people fixed membership dues for just this reason. Yes, we bend toward a few fees to make our budget each year, but we do it reluctantly. As much as possible, we operate as a place to practice and learn the joy of generosity. Almost all of what happens in our congregation comes from giving. And most people will tell you they receive back far more than they give. Such is the virtuous circle of generosity that invites the experience of grace.

So as you are thinking about what to give this year, reflect on how you might be an agent of grace for another. Step away from the question of whether someone else deserves a gift or not, or how much or how little to spend, and ask, can I give a true gift? Can I give solely from a place of gratitude and appreciation? Even the simplest, most humble present, given in the spirit of gratitude, can change a life forever as it facilitates the experience of grace. This kind of giving will bring us great happiness, maybe even our own experience of grace.

And that experience of giving and receiving is what all of us truly deserve.

The Persian poet Hafiz says:
Even after all this time,
The sun never says to the earth, ‘You owe me.’
Look what happens with A love like that.
It lights the whole sky.

May our generous spirit light up the lives of those around us.
May we receive the grace already freely given to us.
May we give it away as freely as it comes to us
whether or not we think others deserve it.

(story referred to above)

“Secret Santa” by Tanja Crouch ( Source: Chicken Soup for the Soul: Christmas Treasury by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen – get a copy for more great stories!)

Manuel and I work in the same building. I’m a music talent agent with a firm on the eighteenth floor. Manuel has his own space near the escalator from the garage to the lobby. He sells newspapers, magazines, gum and candy. I pass Manuel each day as I make my way from the underground parking to the lobby.

Hundreds of people working in the building pass by Manuel each day, and he seems to know everyone’s name. Each morning I stop to buy a newspaper, and Manuel greets me. “Good morning, Miss Tanja. How are you today?” Last year I convinced him to stop calling me “Miss Crouch,” but he refuses to drop the “Miss” in front of my first name. Some mornings I stop to chat a moment and marvel at the fact he supports a wife, three boys and a daughter on his salary.

Prior to Christmas, my assistant learned that Manuel not only supported his own family but had recently taken in his widowed sister and her two children. Manuel’s wife, Rosa, stays home to care for the six children while Manuel and his sister work to support the family. When my assistant heard about this, she decided we needed to become secret Santas to Manuel’s family.

Throughout the month of December, several of us made it our mission to learn all we could about Manuel and his family. We rejoiced as something new was discovered, such as Manuel’s oldest son, Jose, was ten years old. He loved baseball and hoped to one day play professionally. He would get a baseball, bat, glove and cap. Manuel’s only daughter Maria was just learning to read and she loved bears. A special teddy bear and books were selected.

We charted facts, listed gift ideas, then cross-referenced them with what had been purchased. One of the partners in the firm got into the spirit and bought a VCR, then charged a new television set to another partner! Everyone was caught up telling stories of how Manuel had touched our lives with his warm spirit and the details we were learning about his life. We arranged for UPS to deliver our gifts the day before Christmas. The return address was simply North Pole. We speculated at how surprised Manuel would be and could hardly wait to return from the holidays to hear if he would mention it. We never in our wildest dreams anticipated what we would learn.

Manuel had packed up all the gifts and sent them away! The television and VCR went to a nursing home where Manuel’s sister worked as a maid. Clothes were shipped to relatives in Mexico. Food was shared with the neighbors. On and on it went. Manuel considered his family so blessed that they had shared all the wonderful gifts they received with others less fortunate.

“We had the best Christmas ever, Miss Tanja!” Manuel beamed.

“Me, too,” I smiled.

Sam Trumbore

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